Woman Holding Two Tablets (the Cumaean Sibyl?)

Woman Holding Two Tablets (the Cumaean Sibyl?), undated and now at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, is a striking single-figure work presenting a woman — possibly identified as the Cumaean Sibyl — holding what appear to be tablets inscribed with prophetic text. The ancient sibyls, prophetesses of the classical world, were enthusiastically adopted by Renaissance Christian iconography because patristic tradition held that they had predicted the coming of Christ. Michelangelo's celebrated Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512) had fixed the sibyl type in visual culture as a monumental female figure of solemn authority, and subsequent Italian painters regularly incorporated sibyl figures into both devotional and secular programmes. Bonifazio Veronese's version follows this convention while translating it into the Venetian mode: warm flesh tones, rich drapery, and an attentive engagement with the tablets the figure holds. The uncertainty of the identification — the question mark in the title acknowledges scholarly debate — reflects the difficulty of distinguishing sibyl figures from allegorical female personifications in works without documentary evidence.

Oil on canvas, the composition focuses almost entirely on the single figure against a neutral or minimally elaborated background, placing all painterly attention on costume, face, and the held tablets. Warm glazes build the flesh, while the drapery's colour — often a rich crimson or green in Bonifazio's female figures — is constructed with impasto highlights over deeper underpaint to suggest fabric weight and sheen.